Can the MMR or other vac ever cause autism?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25114790/

There hasn't been one of those threads for a while. I am unconvinced that vaccines have nothing to do with autism. Payouts have been made in America and I think Italy.

OK, I think I get that neither bruffin nor CatherinaJTV rates Age of Autism very highly. Quite clear on that thanks! I think quite a lot of people are uncomfortable with parents speaking out about vaccine damage.

I would be much more interested however in opinions on Dr Thompson saying that important government agency funded work, that has been used to reassure parents that there is no connection between MMR vaccination and autism, is fraudulent. Or opinions on why the CDC and the DoJ aren't going after Thorsen (and why this wanted criminal is happily working and publishing scientific articles). Or opinions on what all this means with regards to the thousands of children who had their claims dismissed in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings.

I can see however that it is much easier to attack an online newspaper run by parents than it is to talk about scientific fraud on the part of the CDC being admitted by an author of major papers used to testify to the safety of MMR, but surely ardent MMR defenders must have some sort of opinion on Dr Thompson's revelations? I mean, he says the following in black and white;

I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.

Here is the statement published on Dr Thompson's lawyer's website (who specialize in whistleblowing cases). www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-release-statement-of-william-w-thompson-ph-d-regarding-the-2004-article-examining-the-possibility-of-a-relationship-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/

he also says black on white:

I want to be absolutely clear that I believe vaccines have saved and continue to save countless lives. I would never suggest that any parent avoid vaccinating children of any race. Vaccines prevent serious diseases, and the risks associated with their administration are vastly outweighed by their individual and societal benefits.

Yes he does CatherinaJTV. This is a carefully prepared statement by a whistleblower and his legal team - Thompson no doubt wants to make it clear that he is not against vaccination in general just that he is against manipulating data in order to present a specific vaccine product as being safer than it actually is.

What is your opinion on the omitting of significant data in government funded studies about the safety of a government endorsed pharmaceutical product? Am I to understand by your highlighting of the above phrase from Thompson's statement that you think it is perfectly acceptable because vaccines in general prevent disease? In other words it is ok for the CDC to lie about safety data on one specific vaccine because other vaccines do a pretty good job? I find such a position unethical to the point of being utterly inhumane.

Look chaps! The earth is flat!!!

My parents are are of the view it does, my sibling has severe autism ,im not sure tbh,I can see why though some people cling to this idea. My Dsis was nearly 3 when she had hers back in the early 90s she spoke, was walking the beginnings of toilet training, she had a rash and became ill, my mother had to teach her how to walk and talk again, and was 4 before being fully trained. The kind of brain damage you'd expect to aquire in a car crash, and not ..one..medical investigation was ever carried out. People like my parents have to cling onto something as no alternative explanation was ever looked into.

What's this talk of omitting significant data? If it's the data referred to in the OP, that report with the apparently tiny sample sizes and dodgy conclusions, then I can't see how anyone is making such a big fuss over it.

Latest thinking from current research is ASD is genetic and is a neurological impairment that causes the brain's neural pathways to form non-typically. This starts at birth - with neural pathways tending to be "over formed" in ASD children. Note the high co-incidence of ADHD as a co-morbid of ASD, only just identified - ADHD is impossible to diagnose before the age of 6 because the behaviours of impaired social development only become noticeable when other children make the behavioural step changes and the ADHD child doesn't. ASD markers also only used to become apparent at around age 2 - becuase a typically developing child would improve thier social skills but this is where an ASD child's behaviour can be noticed as non typical.

ASD may or may not be affected by environmental factors, one of which could be MMR. It may interfere with brain chemistry in a small number of children causing malformed dendrites or neural axons, but then so could many other things. However, as most recent research is pulling up ASD behaviour "markers" in young babies it is not possible their ASD could be caused by an injection at 2yrs old, but it may be exacerbated/accelerated by it. It is impossible to prove this although there is a project monitoiring siblings of children already diagnosed with ASD which may provide answers to the atypical brain formations in an ASD child.
Some conditions, such as Retts or disintegrative disorder do show up around age 2 and may co-incide with, but cannot be caused by an MMR jab.

Of my brushes with ASD children they had clear ASD markers long before MMR time. A vital one now identified is the lack of shared attention - which is when a carer points at something to engage the child's interest and they look at it. A child that hasn't done this by age 1 is a high risk for ASD - but this test is rarely carried out in the UK and how many parents would know this?

The omitted data is from this paper

The above was a study done by the CDC, it is commonly referred to as the DeStefano paper. It is routinely used to attest to the safety of MMR and the lack of a link between MMR and regressive autism. It was used as evidence in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings.

Now what has happened is that one of the co-authors (Dr Thompson) has come out in a statement saying that data was purposefully omitted which suggested a temporal link between MMR administration and regressive autism in African American boys. Dr Thompson said that study inclusion criteria was changed in order to manipulate the data and to reduce/disappear the statistical significance of the epidemiological findings. In other words, they didn't like what the raw data suggested so they changed the study design half way through. They then published with the adapted data and declared that all was well with MMR when in fact they knew that they had hit on something that most definitely merited further investigation. This information has been hidden from the public ever since and is only coming out now because Dr Thompson has decided to speak out (originaly to Dr Hooker, providing him with information relevant to the paper linked to in the OP).

What Dr Hooker has done is access the original (unmanipulated) raw data of the 2004 CDC study and he has found the same effect as that buried by the authors of the original paper - that "African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism".

This is massive. Dr Thompson has engaged a law firm who specialize in whistleblower cases and he is basically accusing the CDC of scientific fraud and of covering up data which suggested a link between MMR and autism.

MMR does not cause autism.

End of.

If you believe it does then you must be a fool.

End of.

Zippey, how can you possibly know that it doesn't cause autism? How do you prove that negative? It might not cause autism, it might, we just don't know. The best we can say is that there is no evidence.

You're the fool if you believe otherwise.

You can't prove a negative, but you can say things like 'given the amount of research that has gone into this, with negative findings, it's reasonable to conclude no causal link'.

How hard to you have to look for something before you're allowed to say it's not there?

Not, btw, that I'm saying that research into autism is 'finished', I'm no expert on the intricacies, but it is a bit defeatist to say the best we can ever do is say 'there is no evidence'.

Zipper, you come onto a thread which is about the disclosure that one of the definitive studies, upon which many people based their concrete 'no, no link has been found despite extensive studies' suppressed data which, um, suggested that there was a link (in some part of the population) and deserved further investigation and day that everyone who thinks there might be a link is a fool.

Righto.

So Dr Thompson is a fool, is he? He thinks there is a link worth investigating, and he is finally coming forward and saying so.

Tbh, your post sums up the whole sorry mess.

Even in the face of evidence that there has been mass suppression of data suggesting potential links for years, you continue to parrot the same old nonsense.

It's beyond incredible that anyone could cling to their cosy 'the only one who lied is Andrew Wakefield' now.

Sadly, I wonder how long it will be before the not-so-subtle smearing of Dr Thompson starts. After all, he must have an ulterior motive for this, mustn't he, like a patent to protect, or something

Is nobody concerned that a senior CDC scientist is saying that he and his co-authors intentionally cooked the books in order to suppress data showing a temporal association with MMR vaccination and regressive autism in African American boys???

And that when the original raw data was examined by another scientist just recently he found the same association???

The CDC is being accused of lying to the general public over a major public health issue, for years, and by one of their own employees.

All you people who just keep repeating that MMR cannot ever cause autism, don't you have anything to say about this? I know it is early days and we need more information from Dr Thompson, but currently he has published a legal statement saying that he regrets having cooked the CDC books.

Are my posts on this subject written in invisible ink or does it just not bear thinking about?

X posts with PandasRock! Thank you for your excellent summary of what you aptly call this whole sorry mess.

Yes, the whitchhunt will begin for Dr Thompson. I don't know much about US law, but I hope whistleblower status offers him some protection. He must be under immense pressure.

Noble giraffes : 'How hard to you have to look for something before you're allowed to say it's not there?'

You have to look in the right place to start with, which is something conveniently overlooked by all the 'definitive' studies claiming to 'disprove' "Wakefield's claim" (sorry for multiple quote marks!)

Wakefield only ever claimed there was something odd going on in a small minority of regressive autism cases, never a blanket MMR=cause of all autism as is often attributed to him. The subset of people 'at risk' according to Wakefield's criteria has never been re-examined. One study did accidentally include some children with similar histories, but then excluded them from the data set - oh, a bit like what Dr Thompson is now admitting to doing on his paper.

The whole thing stinks.

*Zippey (sorry, autocorrect)

Unbelievable pressure, Beach (nice to see you, btw - am a nc-er)

It is unbelievable that what is beign focussed on in this latest round of the farce is Dr Hooker, he withdrawal of his paper, being published on so-called sidelined sites/dodgy journals.

Why is this not being shouted from the rooftops?! This is unbelievably serious, and should surely deny public confidence in the CDC, and therefore general health programmes etc? Is is actual,proof, from one of the original authors, that they didn't like what they found when they investigated something (and let's not forget, that 'something' they were investigating was only one of the largest public health crises of modern times) so they changed the results to fit in with what the governments of the time wanted to be able to say.

Yep, I can see why no one wants to talk about it

Grr, ipad.

Should surely dent public confidence (among other typos)